CNote is a super-simple command line based Note taking application which we use to track changes, take notes before signing-off etc. during development. It can be used on all variants of Unix, Linux and Mac OS. It’s power lies in quickly taking notes as you are working, without interrupting your flow. The notes are searchable and stored in a viewable text file. You can download it from CNote – CLI Note Taking Application site or directly install it from command line with the following:

Google Drive has a nice third-party command line tool called gdrive (download link) which is just right for my purpose. So instead of wasting more time trying to make DropBox work on RaspberryPi etc., I decided to use Google Drive cloud for backup. I used an unused Google Account for this purpose.

Get access to Google Drive

Open a browser and login to Google with the account you want to use.

Note: This may be done later too.

Upload ~/.notes to Google Drive for the first time:

gdrive upload ~/.notes

This will provide an url which you have to open in your browser to allow gdrive to access files and directories in your Google Drive. After allowing you will be given a code which you will have to copy-paste in command line for the first upload to complete

After upload it prints a string (something like: 0B8qjyN8TMP9zSmRYQzhNTaBcdEFg) which is the ID of the file. Copy it. This magic key is the identity of your file on Google Drive.

Backup CNote in Google Drive

Now create a file named (for example) updateNoteonGDrive and open it in a text editor and paste the saved file ID.

This ensures every note is backed up in Google Drive. The backup process runs in the background so press Enter and continue with your work. Even if it fails because Internet is down, it will update when you write the next note.

Questions:

Would you like to use DropBox on Raspberry Pi? Let me know in comments below and I can take a look.